Lawrenceville, the neighborhood you have reached on the north bank of the Allegheny River, began as a federal arsenal town. The Allegheny Arsenal was established here in 1814 and produced arms and ammunition through multiple American wars. When the Arsenal was decommissioned after the Civil War, Lawrenceville evolved into a dense working-class neighborhood supplying labor to the mills downstream.
For much of the twentieth century it was home to Pittsburgh's Polish and Italian immigrant communities, with a concentration of churches, clubs, and row houses. The neighborhood experienced steep decline after the steel collapse and was one of Pittsburgh's most distressed communities through the 1990s. Then, beginning in the 2000s, Lawrenceville underwent one of the most dramatic urban transformations in any American city.
Butler Street became a corridor of independent restaurants, boutiques, and bars. The population became younger, more educated, and more expensive. The process has been celebrated as urban revival and criticized as displacement.
It is both. The Arsenal buildings survive as a commercial and residential complex. It is now one of Pittsburgh's most desirable addresses, and its longtime residents are navigating a new Pittsburgh that is not always built for them.